Prison & Police

Custody Cases

Santa Barbara County, CA

Kenneth Krause

May 8, 1999

(Federal Case) Kenneth Krause's cellmate, Jeff Milton,
at USP Lompoc, challenged corrections officer Anita Pahnke after she mouthed
off outside their cell. Milton said, “That's tough talk behind a cell
door.” Against regulations Pahnke opened the cell door, at which point
Milton punched her with such force that she fell down. Although Krause
never touched Pahnke, both he and Milton were dragged out of their cell and
severely beaten before being stripped and chained hand and foot to a
concrete slab for a solid week. They were not only forced to lie naked
in their urine and fecal matter for the week they were chained to the slab,
but they were repeatedly brutalized by several guards who punched and kicked
them.

Krause was convicted of assault despite corrections officers
testifying in his defense against inmate informants testifying for the
prosecution. A videotape surveillance camera recorded the assault, but
Krause's defense was not allowed funds to enhance the video. Krause
was also transferred to the top federal supermax facility, USP Florence, in
Colorado. (Justice:
Denied)
[12/06]

San Joaquin County, CA

Ernest Graham

Nov 7, 1973 (Tracy)

In 1973 Ernest “Shujaa” Graham and co-defendant Eugene Allen,
both blacks, were charged with killing Jerry Sanders, a white prison guard,
while incarcerated at Duel Vocational Institute in Tracy, CA. Graham's
first trial resulted in a hung jury. Graham was convicted and sentenced to
death in 1976 after his second trial. The California Supreme Court
overturned that conviction. Graham's third trial ended in another hung
jury, and he was acquitted at his fourth trial. (DPIC)
[12/05]

Bradford County, FL

Bennie Demps

Sept 6, 1976

Bennie Eddie Demps was sentenced to death for the murder of
Alfred Sturgis inside Florida State Prison. At trial, inmate Larry
Hathaway testified that he reported seeing James Jackson stab Sturgis with a
shank, while Demps held down Sturgis and Harry Mungin acted as lookout. Demps, Sturgis, and Hathaway were all convicted murderers. Two prison
guards, A.V. Rhoden and Hershel Wilson testified that Sturgis named Demps as
one of his three assailants. Demps had previously been sentenced to
death for a double homicide, but his death sentence was commuted to life
imprisonment in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment
unconstitutional because it was carried out in an arbitrary manner. Demps claimed prison officials framed him for the Sturgis killing because he
had escaped his earlier death sentence.

Before trial, Hathaway told an attorney for a prisoners rights
group that he did not witness the Sturgis murder. After the trial, three
inmates came forward to say that Hathaway was nowhere near the scene of the
stabbing. In 1994, Hathaway told a defense investigator that he had
lied at trial. Seven months after the Sturgis killing, inmate Leroy
Colbroth was murdered. Several inmates swore in depositions that
Colbroth was killed because he had stabbed Sturgis. Other inmates later said
that they saw Colbroth kill Sturgis or that he admitted killing him. This information was withheld from Demps' lawyers. Some of these
inmates were willing to help Demps, but did not, stating in sworn affidavits
that prison officials either threatened them with retribution if they
testified or offered incentives, such as transfers or shorter sentences, for
refusing.

Gerald Kogan, the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court,
later stated that he had “grave doubts about Demps,” even though he did not
vote to give Demps a new trial. Demps was executed by lethal injection
on June 7, 2000. (Chicago
Tribune) (Justice:
Denied) (81)
(84)
(10/87)
(11/87)
(89)
(98)
(6/5/00)
(6/7/00)
[8/08]

Santa Rosa County, FL

Lance Fierke

June 25, 2001

Lance Fierke's cellmate at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution
had raped him and had threatened to rape him again. Fierke reported the
incident and when he refused to go back to his cell for more, Officer Dean
beat him. (Report) [9/05]

Union County, FL

Brown & Troy

July 7, 1981 (UCI)

Willie Brown and Larry Troy were sentenced to death for the
murder of Earl Owens, a fellow inmate in Union Correctional Institution. Another inmate, Frank Wise, testified that he saw Brown and Troy leave the
victim's cell shortly before his body was discovered. During appeals, Brown
married a German anti-death-penalty activist named Esther Lichtenfels. She
took an interest in the case and fitted with a legally authorized wire,
obtained an admission from Wise that he had lied about the two men's
involvement. Wise offered to tell the truth for $2000. Wise was then
convicted of perjury and Brown and Troy were released in 1988. (PC)
(CWC)
(FLCC) (ISI)
[7/05]

Union County, FL

Raiford Prison Inmates

(Raiford)

Inmate John Lee Fort confessed on national television to the
murder of another inmate and claimed it was a guard-ordered assassination. Officials blamed Thomas Craig for the murder and kept him in solitary
confinement for two years. At trial, he was acquitted of the murder in
56 minutes and released a few months later. Officials had reason to
blame Craig. According to Craig, “I was on the burial squad.” “They would take us out and have us burying these guys who had supposedly
died of natural causes. I managed to get a look into a couple of those
coffins – one had an obvious bullet hole, another's skull was crushed.”

Another inmate, Bennie Demps, was executed in 2000 despite the
existence of a DOC report that seemed to point to his innocence. There
was irrefutable evidence that Martin Anderson, a 14-year-old inmate, was
brutally beaten to death. The state's medical examiner initially
claimed he had died of his sickle cell anemia. The state of Florida
now openly admits that inmate Frank Valdes was killed by out-of-control
correctional officers. (TruthInJustice)
[9/06]

Cook County, IL

House of Torture Victims

1973 - 1993

Lt. Jon Burge and his fellow detectives at the Area 2 & 3
Police Station on the Southside of Chicago tortured at least 60 persons
between 1973 and 1993. The types of tortures used included Russian
roulette, cigarette burns, electrical shocks, suffocation, radiators,
telephone books, sticks, beatings, cattle prods, and threats. It took
the specific case of Andrew Wilson in 1982 to finally bring the truth to
light. Jon Burge and his detectives had gone overboard by leaving
obvious signs of bruises all over Andrew Wilson's body. An OPS
investigation led to the Goldston Report, which stated and confirmed a
systematic pattern of torture and abuse by detectives under the supervision
of Jon Burge. In 1993, Burge was allegedly fired and two detectives
were suspended. However, Burge receives his full pension and benefits.

Those tortured include the Death Row 10: Madison Hobley,
Leonard Kidd, Aaron Patterson, Andrew Maxwell, Stanley Howard, Derrick King,
Ronald Kitchen, Reginald McHaffey, Leroy Orange, and Jerry McHaffey. Frank Bounds is an 11th death row inmate tortured but he is now deceased. Gov. Ryan has pardoned four of the Death Row 10. (CCADP)
[9/05]

West Feliciana Parish, LA

Angola Three

Apr 17, 1972 (Angola)

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, both blacks, were convicted
of murdering white prison guard Brent Miller in Louisiana's State
Penitentiary at Angola, the largest U.S. Prison. Evidence against them
seems to depend solely on coerced or bribed testimony. Woodfox and
Wallace were known prison activists, and the conviction allowed the prison
to keep them permanently in solitary confinement.

Robert King Wilkerson, also a prison activist, was also held
initially in solitary confinement because officially he was “under
investigation” for the death of Miller, although he was not at Angola at the
time of Miller's death. Later he was charged and convicted of killing
inmate August Kelly, but there was compelling evidence of his innocence. His conviction was later overturned. Afterwards, apparently to avoid
being sued, the state insisted he plead guilty to conspiracy and receive
time served. Wilkerson agonized over the decision, but agreed to it
and was released. Woodfox got a retrial in 1998, but despite the lack
of evidence was re-convicted. (Justice:
Denied) [6/05]

Cole County, MO

Missouri State Massacre

Sept 22, 1954

In response to a prison riot at Missouri State Penitentiary,
authorities shot four inmates to death and wounded another 30. Most were
apparently inmates who had fled the riot. None of the inmates were armed.
(Crime Magazine) [9/05]

Cole County, MO

Missouri State Seven

Sept 22, 1954

During a prison riot at Missouri State Penitentiary, the
prison's most notorious stool pigeon, Walter Lee Donnell, was murdered by
one or more inmates. Donnell had testified against many members of a St.
Louis armed robbery clique including Irv Thomas. These obvious suspects
were not even questioned about Donnell's death. Instead, the leaders of the
riot were tortured into confessing to the murder. When a smaller riot
occurred in October, its leader was also tortured into confessing. The
prison authorities wanted to send a message: “Cause trouble and you will be
forced to confess too.” All seven were convicted of the murder, but a look
at the evidence gives little reason to believe the confessions. The real
killer, Irv Thomas, had his sister release his confession to the killing
upon his death in 1981. (Crime
Magazine) [9/05]

Cole County, MO

Lloyd Schlup

Feb 2, 1984

Lloyd Schlup was convicted of murder in the stabbing death of
Arthur Dade, a fellow inmate at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Dade, a
black inmate, was stabbed to death in a crowded cellblock by Robert O'Neal,
a hit man for the Aryan Brotherhood, a white prison gang. Two prison guards
testified that Schlup held Dade while O'Neal did the stabbing. Schlup was
sentenced to death. Numerous eyewitnesses knew Schlup had not participated
the crime, but investigators had not questioned them. After Schlup's
execution was scheduled in 1993, the victim's mother called the Missouri
Governor saying she did not believe Schlup killed her son. Her emotional
appeal was helped by an Inside Edition report that brought national
attention to the case. Schlup's conviction was overturned. Rather than
face trial in 1994, he took a plea deal that would not interfere with his
ability to seek parole in 2003 on the assault charge for which he was
originally imprisoned. (Schlup
v. Delo) (Time)
[10/05]

Cole County, MO

Joseph Amrine

Oct 18, 1985

Joseph Amrine was convicted of murdering another prisoner,
Gary Barber, at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Amrine
was sentenced to death. He was convicted on the testimony of three
jailhouse snitches, in spite of a prison guard testifying that one of the
snitches was the actual killer. Six other inmates stated that Amrine was
elsewhere in the prison, playing cards at the time. The three snitches
later admitted they lied to escape relentless rape or prosecution for the
prison murder. The case is the subject of a documentary, Unreasonable
Doubt: The Joe Amrine Case. During Amrine's appeal to the Missouri
Supreme Court, the prosecution argued that Amrine should be executed even if
the court found him innocent, but the court established “actual innocence”
as a Missouri standard that allowed it the right to overturn convictions
that contained no technical errors. The court overturned Amrine's
conviction in 2003 and prosecutors released him three months later after
they decided not to retry him for the crime. (KC
Star) (JP)
[12/06]

Greene County, MO

Eric Clemmons

Aug 7, 1985

Eric Darnell Clemmons was convicted of the murder of Henry
Johnson, a fellow prisoner at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Clemmons had been cellmates with Johnson, but was moved to a different cell
on July 1, 1985 after he accused Johnson of making sexual advances towards
him. There was no reported trouble between the two following the move. This move occurred more than a month prior to Johnson's murder. Prison
guard Thomas Steigerwald testified that as he was walking towards a group of
inmates, he saw an inmate strike Johnson. Johnson then ran past Steigerwald,
at which point, Steigerwald realized that Johnson had been stabbed. Steigerwald then pursued the inmate who struck Johnson. This inmate turned
out to be Clemmons.

According to Clemmons, Steigerwald did not witness the
stabbing, but had merely seen Johnson running into him after he had been
stabbed by inmate Fred Bagby. Several other inmates testified that
Bagby had stabbed Johnson. Following Johnson's stabbing, Bagby himself
was stabbed three months later and died prior to trial. The State
argued that the testimony of Clemmons' witnesses should be discounted
because it was easy for them to try to help Clemmons by blaming someone who
could not defend himself. Handling his own appeal, Clemmons discovered
an internal DOC memorandum that had been withheld from his defense in
violation of Brady v. Maryland. The memo related that minutes after
Johnson's stabbing, an inmate named Dwight Clark had told a guard captain
that two men had performed the stabbing. Clark thought one inmate was
Fred Bagby, but the other inmate he only knew by sight. On retrial in
2000, Clemmons was acquitted. (Archives)
[4/08]

Clinton County, NY

David Wong

Mar 12, 1986

David Wong, a busboy in Manhattan's Chinatown, was arrested
for participating with co-workers in an armed robbery of his employer's Long
Island home in 1983. While serving his sentence upstate at Clinton
Correctional Facility, he was charged with and convicted of murdering inmate
Tyrone Julius.

In March 1999, a New York Times article quoted former
prison employees who stated that Wong's innocence was “common knowledge” at
the prison. Fellow inmates understood that Nelson Gutierrez, a
long-time rival of Julius, had killed him, but they were afraid to speak up
at the time. Gutierrez was paroled in 1994 and returned to the
Dominican Republic where he died of an apparent drug overdose in May 2000. By 2002, almost a dozen former inmates had signed affidavits supporting
Wong's innocence. Wong was denied a new trial, but the decision was
reversed on appeal and all charges against Wong were dropped in 2004.

Wong, an undocumented alien, remained held by immigration
authorities until Aug 2005, when they deported him to Hong Kong. (NAM) [11/05]

Wyoming County, NY

Attica Massacre Victims

Sept 13, 1971

Prompted by horrendous conditions, the 1281 inmates at the New
York state prison in Attica took over the prison on Sept. 9, 1971 and took
the guards there hostage. One guard died died during the takeover due to
his own attempt to be heroic. The hostages were treated well and were
guarded by the inmate leadership from potential assault from lone inmates. The guard hostages were dressed in ordinary inmate clothing so that
potential outside snipers would not be able to tell whom they were shooting
at. The uprising began as an unfocused riot, but grew into a focused and
reasonable demand for better prison conditions.Read More by Clicking Here

Greer County, OK

Troy Hickey

Jan 21, 1988 (Granite)

Troy Hickey was convicted of murdering inmate Richard Allen
Payne at the Oklahoma State Reformatory at Granite. Payne's cellmate,
Bobby Petkoff, who was serving a life sentence for murdering his brother,
first told authorities that he had found Payne lying on the floor, bleeding,
when he returned to his cell. Later, Petkoff changed his story and
claimed that inmate Steve Ness stabbed Payne while another inmate, whom he
did not know, held him at knifepoint. When shown a photo lineup,
Petkoff picked out the unknown accomplice. However, Petkoff was later
walked past Hickey and changed his identification of the unknown accomplice
to Hickey. This identification was illegal because it was a “showup
identification.”

Three inmates testified against Hickey, including Petkoff. All were given deals for their testimony, but the existence of the deals
were hidden at trial. Hickey later found out that Petkoff was
originally a prime suspect in the murder. He also found that Petkoff
had been covered in blood at the time of the stabbing. It would seem
likely that if Hickey had held him down, Hickey would have been covered in
blood as well, but he had no blood on any of his clothing or on anything
that he owned. In 1996, Ness signed an affidavit stating that he
murdered Payne and that Hickey was not with him at the time. The
affidavit also stated that Ness hardly knew Hickey at the time of the crime,
and that Hickey's conviction was due to mistaken identity by inmate
witnesses, after weeks of pressure and coercion by state authorities.
(Justice: Denied)
[10/08]

Chester County, PA

Wade Evan Deemer

Aug 24, 2002

Wade Evan Deemer hanged himself in a West Chester police
station after being arrested for a rape he did not commit. He did not have
his bipolar medication with him. DNA testing conducted after his death
excluded him as the rapist. (FJDB) (F)
[7/05]

Philadelphia County, PA

Edward Ryder

Aug 17, 1973

Edward Martin Ryder, Jr. was convicted of the murder of Samuel
Molten, a fellow inmate in Holmesburg Prison. Molten had been fatally
stabbed. Centurion Ministries' investigation found an eyewitness, who
identified the real killers. Ryder was granted executive clemency by Gov.
Robert P. Casey and freed in Sept. 1993. After his release, Ryder's
conviction was vacated in 1996 because of prosecutorial misconduct. (CM) (76)
(80)
[5/05]

Alberta, Canada

Richard McArthur

Jan 24, 1986

Richard McArthur was convicted of the
stabbing murder of a fellow inmate at the Drumheller Penitentiary. Following McArthur's conviction he met four witnesses in regard to the
stabbing while serving time at the Edmonton Institution. They informed him
of what they knew about the stabbing, explaining their earlier denial of
knowledge to Drumheller investigators was because they did not want to get
involved. These witnesses supported McArthur's contention that he killed
the deceased in self-defence. Three of these witnesses saw the deceased,
armed with a knife, go to McArthur's cell shortly before the stabbing
incident. Based on this new evidence, the Alberta Court of Appeal
overturned his conviction. Since McArthur had already served the minimum
time for his conviction and the crown did not wish to retry him, the Court
also ordered his acquittal. (R.
v. McArthur) [8/09]